podcasting 2.0 for April 9 2021, Episode 32 oh yeah we got
lightning in a bottle baby
Don't worry all become apparent Friday once again it's time for
a board meeting of podcasting 2.0 podcast index.org
it's well past lunchtime for once I'm out of curry here in
Austin Texas and didn't have a Bama the SAR of rebalancing
channels Dave Jones,
everybody. That is not me. That is not the year the channel guy.
I couldn't think of anything that fast. I just need to see I
tried to do alliteration I failed horribly on this.
You don't want me rebalancing your candles?
You know that couldn't be a good pickup line now baby Do you need
your challenge channels rebalanced? Because I could come
over and show you how to do that.
Yeah, that's that's I don't think that's gonna get you very
far. I haven't get the drink in the face.
I am. Hi. I'm feeling another jingle coming on though. Yeah,
we companion to our hot hot namespace talk.
Channel.
So this is a this is a very special show where we're used to
having guests in the board room. Sometimes they're just assessed
or sometimes they are full fledged board members. We'd like
to have them hanging out usually it's it's via remote connection.
But today for the first time. And also for the first time in
the actual studio, which I think is the first time I've had
someone in the studio doing a show for real. We welcome we
welcome the major Domo of the lightning network. Ryan Gentry.
Hey, guys,
big fan of your work.
Love Your Work. Big fan. Love Your Work. Big
fan. Love Your Work. Especially I think my favorite was the last
one.
That was oh my god, that was really really good. Ryan, it's
so good to have you here, man. Nice to have you at the board
meeting.
Absolutely. I'm really happy to be here. I mean, huge, huge fan
of what you guys are doing with with lightning technology. I
think it's it's, it's fascinating. And I'm really
excited. It's been great kind of jolt of energy, the last six
months or so that you guys have been working on this.
And it's kind of it's kind of interesting, because you I don't
know if you know how much but you must. How much of a role
you've played in, in what's been going on with our connection
into lightning. So first, maybe just for people don't know who
you are you work at lightning labs. Did you are you the SVP of
business development
on the just the the business development lead is the title.
We have a lot of leads on Team infrastructure lead
assistant to the regional manager of XP right? To do TPS
reports and shit do
I get to come here instead,
our greatest job was well so that's really what I want to
point out is that you have been wherever I turn as we started
this this adventure, I bumped into you, which is a really good
thing because you are you are really some you know, I say
mode, your dome major dome on me that somehow you are the one
that communicates with everybody, you could not have a
better business development person in this in this place
where we're all at right now. I mean, you're really kicking ass
because you hooked us up with everybody.
That's the job.
I mean, like it's, it's
easy to do, right? Because I'm just when I when I got started
kind of in my Bitcoin adventure, kind of before I really got into
bitcoin, what I was obsessed with and what I studied at my,
in my master's degree was like telecommunications and trying to
find like, what's going to be the next big network? Right?
Like, you know, we had, you know, the, you know, the
internet itself, then we had social networks. What's next?
What's going to be the next big network, and I have full
conviction, it's going to be the lightning network. And so just
being a part of growing this thing and seeing it get bigger
and bigger seems to get traction, have people find uses
for it like I would, I would do this stuff, even if I wasn't
getting paid. So it's just it's it's fun to be able to connect
people working on things. It's fun to figure out what certain
people are doing what's working, what's not working. Spread the
word. It's a it's a really easy job. I really enjoy it.
Yeah, I think I think Dave and I feel the same way except we
actually aren't getting paid, which is kind of
cool, but that's the problem I'm
solving for you. Right
if you wanted to know what that feels like. You know, it's
funny, like there's three there's three there's there's
sort of three people that always like jazz me up about Bitcoin
and lightning stuff. And they're like, you're like, like the
first base coach, you know, just five years getting fired up.
It's It's you, Paulie toy, and jack Mahler's it's like I can
listen to any one of you guys. And just get the fire back under
me if I've all sudden, you know, it's like, everything's
dwindling. I'm like, Oh, god, this is annoying.
That's high praise, man. That's that that's rarefied air and
breathing. I really appreciate that. No,
I'm serious. Yeah, yeah, you three guys just know how to
bring Just bring the fire.
So what's really important for people listening to this is to
know how you brought in some really good pieces together. So
nine months ago, and I think that was when Dave and I had
this idea, and we started to implement it. And then somewhere
last week of August, we did this first show, we start getting the
index going. And in the end, our mind was always a namespace, and
there's going to be a value block. And then we're going to
do streaming payments through through key sand on the
lightning network was what you've now seen at the curry
cash recipe recipe Blitz sitting there, that's what I learned how
to do everything on. And so it was, so I sent a like, an email
to info at Sphinx dot chat, which Paul picked up and he
replied, and so we got connected. And that starts to go
very fast. And then did Paul put me in contact with you? It must
have been that way. Unless you're on their board, right? I
think Yeah,
I'm on the board. But um, you know, on the board, you should
be I mean, yeah.
We all want to be on your
stock gives a shit we SATs, baby. Okay, so and then you hook
me up with a number of people, including Roy, from from breeze
Absolutely. Does that connection. I just want everyone
to understand that was huge, because here we are. Really no
more than five months after after that connection. And we
have another app released, you know, App Store, as you know,
iOS, Android, working. Yep, working front and back all the
way through.
I mean, and again, my part of that was very small, and not
really all that hard. It's really easy. When you have a
great team like breeze and great entrepreneur, like Roy, did, you
know, I can give him like, Hey, I think this is interesting. You
should talk to this guy. And he can just go do his due diligence
horn for you. He can do his diligence, and then just run
with it. Another live and it's working. And it's beautiful. I
knew that they would just do a great job with it and knock it
out of the park. And I'm thrilled to see that it's really
working for him.
Yeah, well, it's not just working for him. That's right. I
mean, how many how many podcasts we have using the value block?
Dave? Now? What are we? What's the conversion ratio?
71.
Wow, really?
Yeah. Yeah, that's this is going fast.
Oh, I didn't realize it was that many.
And it's been it's it's been really it's been such an
interesting ride to see this meld between, you know, wallet
developers and podcast developers. Because it's so
separate. And they, you know, I appreciate Roy so much, who
contacted me after lunch said, Boy, I really apologize. I know
nothing about podcasting is I apologize, man, I didn't set you
up for it. I should have warned you, but a lot of stuff. So what
is the where do you Where do you think the growth is going to
come from besides just more podcasters? Do you think that
more wallet developers will see an opportunity here?
It's a really good question.
I mean, I certainly think that there's tons of room to run.
With podcasters I definitely think ball developers being able
to just get, you know, being able to skim, you know, being
able to skim just a little bit off the top of financial
transactions is like, you know, one of the oldest businesses in
the book,
right? What the businesses it gives you Exactly, yeah, it is
the business
of business. And so if you can get to where you're, you're
sitting right on top of the money, right, you're right on
top of the value flow, you own the user, and you're, you know,
part of the connection to them and the value of that thing for
very easy to be able to start skimming, just a few few stats
in your pockets, every every every transaction, right?
I think that that's when you say skim, I mean, openly and
transparent.
Absolutely, yeah. Not not nefarious at all, just that you
know, you're providing value, like, yeah, you deserve to be
paid a little bit for all the hard work you're doing. So I
think it makes it makes
a and all those guys.
Yeah, absolutely. And then and then yes. And then it flows to
the ecosystem, right? I think the guy not everybody's gonna
want to run a node. You know, we, there's this constant
tension. And on the lightning labs side, which is, you know,
we are both building the protocol was the protocol needs
to be trustless and needs to be decentralized needs to be built
for the sovereign individual, like it's very important for the
protocol to be able to spread to, you know, billions of
devices all over the planet
that it is totally neutral while you're doing the corporate
pitch. I'd like to understand a little bit more about the
history because I really, honestly don't know. JACK Dorsey
has a huge good token with me for what he's done. But I
believe that he had foresight and said, Okay, this, this
company needs to be there and whether he created it funded I
don't really know what their connection is there. I'd like to
know that. I just like to know where it came from. Because if
anyone's a detractor of what we're doing, and these people
like nor no matter what, like, well, you're who's really okay,
I can see the protocol. No, but tell me about lightning itself
with lightning labs came from end to end the whole Genesis.
Because that's a little fuzzy to me.
That's a great question. And honestly, I'm probably not going
to do it justice because I joined, you know, relatively
late, but this goes all the way back to, you know, 2000,
probably 13 2014. Right. And really, it goes all the way back
to, you know, like how Finney on Bitcoin talk forums in the early
early early days, you know, it's very obvious to anybody with any
sort of networking experience that the Bitcoin network is not
going to scale, right? You got one block every 10 minutes, that
block can only be one megabyte, right? That's 13 kilobits per
second of throughput. That's, you know, four times, or 25% of
the old AOL, dial up modems right? At 4k, right? It's not
very good, right? We're gonna need another way.
We live that life Ryan Gentry, who do you think you are young
man?
So people for a very long time and the Bitcoin community people
much smarter, and much, much more talented than me? We're
trying to figure out what's the right way to scale this network?
Right? How can we get it to where billions of people can use
this on a daily basis while maintaining its property? So
there's tons of great research that went into it, a lot of
really great ideas, a lot of people that kind of pioneered
the idea of, you know, using payment channels to like Balaji
Srinivasan his company 20 one.co, I think earned calm
is what it turned into
a one one ml
21. co was was
Oh, yes, yeah.
So it was like, you know, you would get paid in these little,
you know, micro transactions for doing work, which is, you know,
not dissimilar to what we're seeing from routing node, but it
was with like a little Bitcoin miner in the device. And that
just didn't work, right. So they had to pivot and sell to
Coinbase. And all this sort of stuff. But like people were
thinking about these ideas very early on, but it wasn't until
the lightning network white paper got written, which by a
guy named Joseph Poon, and a guy named Tad Raja attaches at MIT,
the digital currency currency Institute. Just doing I think,
is on a beach in Thailand somewhere with these old crypto
guys
like, like the old
not Joseph was, was kind of a younger guy. I don't know him
very well. tadge is a researcher. He's He's older than
me, but it's really talented researcher at MIT. So they
released a white paper Elizabeth Stark, but lightning labs co
founder,
which you come from, because she
she edited the wipe, she was a part of developing the white
paper and publishing it.
We'd love to have more women down in the trenches with us on
the developer side.
She's a, you know, a warrior. She's in the trenches fighting
and slugging this out. She needs to send some,
some lieutenants and stuff down our soldiers here. Yeah,
that's one thing I've brought up with Adam before is that the
lightning labs, and just the lightning labs staff, if you go
to your about page, or whatever it is, it's like,
commercial baby.
Yeah, this is basically the most diverse group of people I've
ever seen. I mean, it's, it's amazing. You know, we talked
about that early on, Adam was like, you know, podcasting
doesn't have a diversity problem. We have lightning a
Bitcoin doesn't have a diversity problem. And just look around. I
mean, everybody's already doing it. Yep.
I will. I will. That's that's 100% of that great. Well, I
don't know about 100. vast amount of that credit goes to
Elizabeth. And I'm sure she'll be thrilled to hear that it was
noticed. Yeah. And so so just noticed, admired
by rational. Absolutely. Yeah.
So when I say we'd like some developers, you know, we'd love
to see more female developers just for the energy to man
different insight, then be really good
at preaching to the choir.
We have lots of female testers, by the way, this is a this is a
very good thing
that is very, very good sexually. Yeah. Yeah. So the
white paper got released, people were very excited about it. And
you know, Elizabeth, and Lalu, just by our CTO is goes by roast
beef. That is Oh, that's right. Yeah.
Oh, connection.
Yeah, gotcha. Oh, interesting. So they teamed up and said, You
know, like, the only way that this network is really going to
get built, is if we raise the money and go and build it. So
you know, I think,
um, they had no prior company experience,
Elizabeth is, you know, was a former professor of law,
corporate law, in particular, at Stanford, and Yale, although at
the time was, like, 21, maybe, I think just coming out of a
master's degree at UC Santa Barbara. Hmm. I mean,
so they went together and they raised the money together, they
raised the raises. Um, David Sachs, I think was involved in
the seed and maybe jack Dorsey was in the seed as well. I don't
know this is all public information. She can factor the
fact. But you know, I do you know, you said I think multiple
times that the jack is like, you know, the mastermind behind all
of it.
I'm wrong here to prove me wrong. factcheck false.
He's I mean, he was he is a seed investor. And he's an investor
in lightning labs for sure. But this is very much, you know,
kind of Bitcoin community coming up with the protocol idea,
Elizabeth and all the running with it, raising the money and
then going out and building it. There you go.
Thank you for correcting us on that. Now. That's good. That's
good to know.
Okay, well, then they went, it was really them.
Well, Holy moly, it hasn't have a whole new perception of
everything. I'm glad we straighten that out. And so
you know, and then it took, like, you know, the thing
that's, that's tough about Bitcoin is, you know, a large
part of the value prop of Bitcoin, the value prop of
Bitcoin is that the rules don't change, right? There's 21
million coins blocks every 10 minutes. Everybody's dealing
with the same rules, you know, they may not be fair or
anything, but it's quality opportunity,
right? Interesting that a copyright lawyer, co authored
the white paper of the lightning network. That's very
interesting.
It's pretty interesting in that she brings like a really unique
perspective to just about everything, because
this is the thing that people don't understand. This is where
podcasters fall down. This is where I think our developers and
it's not because, you know, they're just they're not speed
that they've been focused on other things, you know, once you
I mean, for me, it was right off the bat understanding that in a
in a decentralized network, where you want to pick when you
want to get paid, you have to send an invoice already. That by
itself is counterintuitive to Venmo. Which of course, what
jack Mahler's went to solve, I think very successfully, no. So
that once you get past that, then the idea of channels and
liquidity is, I mean, it took me months.
Yeah, to really,
I mean, I saw it, I knew what had to be done, but didn't get
it until, okay, now it's final fall into place. And that, and
what I always say to people is freedom takes effort. Yeah, I
have no other hands. Oh,
and also the other part of it that is really hard for people
to understand is, is a lot of people come and look at this
technology from the top down, right saying like, I want this
thing to work, like the thing I'm used to in the past, like
Venmo, right. But the way this technology was built from the
bottom up, right, this is working within the constraints
of the Bitcoin protocol. And like, you know, everybody wishes
the Bitcoin protocol had like different knobs and widgets and
things that we could twist. But you know, like, this is the
thing that belongs to everybody is what it is, and it you just
have to you have to build from the ground up. We're building
like brand, a brand new system, right? This is like, you know,
the telecom people in the 80s were probably like, well, I wish
the internet could do this. Because TCP IP is shitty, and
bla bla bla bla
Novell network is the way to go. It's like well,
but no, like, we just we got to work within these constraints.
And I'm sorry, it's gonna take a little bit longer. And it's
gonna be counterintuitive, but like the kids, the people that
are really going to get this and are going to run with it right
there in like seventh grade right now.
Well, let me ask you about, about something along those
lines. Just kind of like misunderstanding. Fundamental.
Like I saw somebody on the mastodon posted today. I think
it was Christopher I seen posted a Twitter thread where Eric wall
had a bed with you. Okay. Can you just explain? I was
I missed this. One. Can't wait to hear it.
Yeah. So the one who who posts the guy who posted it was like,
clearly like a lightning hater. And Erik Erikson,
I wouldn't say he's a lightning hater, Eric, no, not
him. The guy that posted the screenshots. Okay. And I was
trying to figure out like, of trying to follow along with this
thread. And it seemed like, it was just different versions of
the same argument. I've heard about lightning, which
basically, to me, seems to always boil down to a
misunderstanding of liquidity.
Yes, I think you're exactly right. So for background, in, I
think, mid summer of last year. before I'd started lightning
labs, probably I would not have engaged in this public activity.
If I was already employed by lightning labs when I did it. He
was running, he was running against Bitcoin in a big way.
You know, there was like tons of people talking about how eath
layer twos were right around the corner, and they were gonna blow
the lightning network out of the water, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah. And I was just, you know, wanting to call Eric in
particular. And Eric's Eric's a nice guy, like, we're friends.
What does he do? I don't know. He's,
uh, he used to work for the human rights foundation. And now
he works for a fund. I think he's either in Sweden and
Norway's Scandinavian. So he worked for fund up there that,
you know, it's kind of a weird kind of European conglomerate
where they do invest in a lot of lightning stuff. So like, he's
very familiar with the tech. He's not a hater. But he is also
kind of like, intellectually more curious about the etherium
ecosystem. Right? Well,
that that is kind of, yeah, it's it's, it's Aggies versus long.
I made this I made this comparison on the Marty bent
podcast.
Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's probably why I picked it
up. Yeah, that's totally what it is. Yeah,
it's very true. I mean, you know, yeah. Auburn versus
Alabama. Yeah, it's the same story over and over,
except, you know, we all know Longhorns better. Totally
doesn't matter what your site is.
But so, so I challenged I was like, you know, I won. I don't
think that aetherium is going to continue running against Bitcoin
like, it's this is just a momentary Blip.
I'm sorry, take it back aetherium is not equatable to
Bitcoin ever, ever 1,000% not impossible, I just want to make
sure people know what my Maxi status
on your credit that was that
was a point of personal privilege. Sorry, you don't
need, you don't need to turn in your card. I'm glad you said
that. Yeah. Test. Yeah. Gotcha. No, but the so you know, I just
I wanted to be, you know, kind of short, etc. And I wanted to
short the expectations of these new layer twos, or we're gonna
launch because as you see, like, this is really hard technology.
Like, it's not it's not that the lightning developers like don't
know what they're doing. It's that this is really hard, right?
protocol development is. It's, it's like an academic exercise,
right? You got to think of all the ways in which this can fail.
And not only like, people using it wrong, but like, you know,
what happens if this bit gets flipped, because, you know, the
network connection is spotty, or like, you know, gamma radiation
comes down and hits the, you know, server and the wrong way
or something like that, or
a bunch of Yahoo's come along and start doing 15,000
transactions a month into channels not prepared.
Exactly right. Right. Y'all had that in your initial plan,
right. 100%
fight douchebags from podcasting to follow up or fill up our
channels,
that's literally a unit test.
And so there were just all these inflated expectations. So I bet
Eric, or I said, You know, I bet by you know, March of next year,
the kind of total value locked in these eath layer twos will
not be more than, you know, 10x, that of the lightning network.
And I won't be clear, and I tweeted, cause as Katie
said that, say it again, I want to understand the bet.
So the thief layer twos, right, total public capacity of
lightning network right now is like $60 million. And at the
time, it was something like 10 million or something like that.
And so saying that that the total value in public network
capacity of the eath layer twos was not going to be more than
10x. What was enlightening,
what is the eighth layer two?
There's a bunch of there are we shouldn't dignify them with
honor.
You they weren't.
You weren't for lightning labs.
But they're they're very, like,
like the freenas cowboy anymore.
Like, you know, I won the I won the bat, which I'm happy with
clearly right? I was right. Yeah. So I made I made 1000
bucks off of him. And he paid me over lightning, which was, which
is good. And we can get around to the difficulties with that.
That's what I wanted to talk about was the difficult because
that seemed to be the whole circus was the How do you get
paid and they felt a little, it felt a little plate up to me. It
was it was,
but like i but before we get into that, I want to make the
point that like, this is very much a bet that was just like
shorting over inflated expectations of these people who
were overly exuberant, totally locked to the of the lightning
network is like a meaningless metric. It's it's it doesn't
it's not important. It's not indicative of everything.
Because as you guys well know, right? Private channels are all
over the place. Tons of people have private channels, and that
that capacity doesn't show up. Correct,
right? It's like, it's like GDP, it did anything.
Damn. Dave actually has quite a financial exposure, because I
know he knows what he's talking about. It's very good one, Dave.
Got me on that. So.
So like, it's, it's not important. And the most
important reason why is like, the whole point of lightning, as
you guys know, is recycling capital. Like, you want to keep
the capital and channels and you want to get to send it back and
forth as much as possible, you want like as high velocity as
possible. So you can make those fees, right. So you don't want
to put a bunch of capital onto the network that's not doing
anything, right. That's the exact opposite. You want to put
all of these coins in the places where they're being used all the
time. So capital efficiency is like really the driving goal
here. And capital efficiency is like, exactly opposite towards a
lock. So like, just to be clear. listeners, if anybody comes up
to you and says, oh, the total value locked to lightning, like
hasn't grown. Like, you can just point at them and know like,
that person doesn't know what private channels and all that
I know of at least $50,000 in private channels just meaning
just from mucking around.
It's everywhere, right? So it's just it's a stupid metric. And
it was kind of a stupid bet. But no, one of them made 1000 bucks.
So like when it was so to bring, so back to Dave's question. Yes.
Is what was actually the argument. So the argument was,
you know, Eric lost the bet. And in kind of a very Eric way of
settling that he decided to, you know, find all of the SATs that
he had in lightening wallets on, you know, old phones that hadn't
been touched or synced in like a year on old unsupported wallets,
and tried to send me those sets, right. So these are nodes that
hadn't been synced to the graph and run a year and a half You
know like there they were old channels are like literally the
Eclair wallet is like no longer like really supported I think
that you go over to the Phoenix wallet yeah and like the Bitcoin
lightning wallet like Dino Anton has moved on to a new project
and like hasn't supported so it was like the first two that he
started with. So he's like tweeting about how solving all
these problems like well
Yeah, dude like of course you're having
problems like you haven't used these in two years and like this
is cutting edge technology it's move it's moved very quickly.
Like Of course of course it's
not pixel to add in my bed bed table drawer.
Dave understands this type of support to understand these
issues, though it's like yeah,
it's more like I got my PlayStation two out and I VR
game isn't worth what the hell right that man so you know like
I think so he had all he tweeted out all these problems and was
very you know theatrical.
You jumped in action as a good corporate man right on where
to go and so but what I think what's important though, is
eventually we did get all the funds over to a new breeze
lightning wallet and he was able to send me in one shot $1,000
Wow on the lightning network from a noncustodial breeze node
realized personal routing
well and what was the fee?
I mean, it was I actually
I can I could look it up. Let's see I'm and by the way while
Ryan is looking at up all of you listening to us on pod station
swings or breeze, crank up those value sliders give us max best
SATs per minute boost a little bit willya. It cheapskates. Hey,
David. I was telling Ryan I had lunch earlier with him but we
didn't talk about anything really was quite difficult. So
here's what I've noticed is I've been looking at the canoe, I
have my own node and the index node I've been looking at. So
when it comes to per minute, satoshis I guesstimate because I
don't have any I mean, I have the data, but I only have
portions of it. I guesstimate that on breeze, most people are
averaging 50 SATs permit somewhere between 50 SATs or 100
SATs on minute streaming. But the boosts are permanent. But
the boosts are very low, not a lot of boost coming from breeze.
Now, on the other hand, on Sphinx, we pretty much only see
the standard five sets per minute, which is the default,
which is hidden away in preferences. contrarily The
boosts outweigh almost the breeze payments because people
can interact and show boost to each other. And you know, like
oh, here's my numerology boost, or here's my big baller boost or
any of that and so that, that gamifies that part of the
process inside the tribe. So, if somehow we could get Spinks to
put the value slider on the outside and get breeze to figure
out how to show all users including the Sphinx users what
boosts are coming
that the psychology of this so
that's what it that's the value for value we learned that
numerology is such a big deal and i think it's it's almost a
problem I'm breeds that you can't it's it's a you know, step
by step you can enter your own custom amount it's around a
number Yeah, which is an interface choice but therefore
people don't use it because you can't send your little code you
know go here 6969 I've learned all this in 14 years I just want
to say that it's it's phenomenal to see these types of things
with it never been able to research in podcasting before
listener behavior we have. We have download behavior of
phones. That's it. Phones we don't know shit about listeners,
you're advertising to phones people
well that I'll start I mean that started with no agenda way way a
long time ago. Y'all playing 14 years ago? Yeah, yeah, they're
trying to see like, because you when y'all opened up donations
and opened up the value for value payment, then you had
immediately people starting to send you numerology and custom
things and that became their their way of expressing
themselves with you know, financially it's like sending a
message what I realized there's so much power in that
what I realized after watching Max and Stacy talk about it that
we've a lot because of the open nature and Justin was Nikki Oh
rezvani rezvani we had lunch with him he coined the term play
wall so good play wall like I play wall calm already taken by
the way. So play wall, and the minute you enable that, and this
it's hard to meet there has been no no price discovery and
creative content since Apple unbundled the album and made
tracks 99 cents an app. It's the same thing by the way. You put
together at song track you put together An app just as much
love passion work goes into it. And it can be lots of videos,
you understand the parameters. But that was not price discovery
that was price fixing. And it's hurt, it's hurt, the music
business has been destroyed. And it's it's created a mindset of
which I think is not accepted, by the way by, by this
generation. Yeah, you know, and hopefully you see that the same
way I do is like, this is not this is not a price discovery,
this is a fucking rip off, and you take How much? So the minute
you say, by the way, this value for value thing is how much you
think it's worth. It's 10x if not 100x. It's, it's just scary,
because we're not educated that way.
And now the now they're just trying to now like the the
players that within podcasting, the big players like Spotify,
now, they're just exploring just different versions at the same
price locking mechanism, but as before 99 or 299-490-9799. Like
that, that stuff, it's still it just plants, it's just a rehash
of the same of the same thing of divorcing the the sense of
value, the subjective value of the listener, from the actual
core content, what they think is worth, they literally can't pay
you more, they literally can they're prohibited from paying
you more money, you know, they just dropped a check in the
mail, literally, you know, it's like that whole idea of bringing
the value for anything that brings the price brings the
value in line with the price in the subjective mind of the of
the consumer. I mean, there's nothing that I know that nothing
else does, then no
value is projected. That's like the number one question I get
from, from especially finance bros about Bitcoin is like,
well, but what's the what's the intrinsic value of a Bitcoin?
It's like, well, I reject the premise of the question all
value subjective.
What else? By the way, that question is very invaluable as
zero value to me that question just go away. But who are these?
Who are these these bros who talk about? You know,
I was in a fraternity. My world is filled with beauty. Yeah.
What fraternity Delta Tau Delta, same
as Matthew McConaughey and Governor Abbott. They're both
Delta UT. Okay, fun story about Matthew McConaughey is we had
the same house mother like the living lady who
lived Ra.
Like Like he had to have like a live in house mother, like
insurance purposes. Fire Department, all that sort of
stuff. How
misogynistic eternity.
So apparently, Matthew McConaughey his freshman year
he's from, you know, Longview, right? East Texas. Apparently
his freshman year he the whole first semester while he was
pledging pledging. He convinced the entire fraternity and all
the all of his friends that he was from Australia. And it was a
foreign exchange student spoke on the show you
could do that. I
bet he could do that. And then he came back in the spring. It
was like, from long view.
He seems like a nice guy. I've never had brain count. I never
have either. Yeah. Um,
so what was the go ahead? No, go ahead. I was just like, what was
the fee? What was the theory? Oh, yeah.
Zap doesn't pull up the fee. Unfortunately. Sorry. Yeah, that
was I will I'll look it up. When I get back to like the actual,
the, the command line.
I mean, I bet it was, you know, 50 pips or something like that.
And it went from Brees wallet to your voltage node,
not to my voltage node to my I run too many notes. This was my
routing node. Mine's the one with like, all the inbound
because like, you know, this payment had to succeed. Right?
So I know,
oh, this isn't true. Now, do you have this? Like, is it like a
work thing? You have a huge routing node?
I mean, it's more of a work thing. It's more just like, I
mean, it kind of is a work thing. Because I want to get
experience just
like Ron just like me, you're using your own node to fix it.
Yes, fix it and learn how it all works. Rather than upgrades and
feeling you know, the pain points that everybody else's
Yeah, like, right. But this is like, you know, like, a
significant amount of money on it. So that
kind of begs the question. What is the lightning labs goal? What
is their mission in life?
Wondering that going to the next billion people,
okay, and how do they expect to make a living doing that?
So are right now like are the products that we offer, right is
liquidity services. So as you will know, channel management
and liquidity management is just a bear. It's, it's hard. It's
really tough. So we've been kind of laser focused on that for the
last couple years with first dilute product and second the
pool product. But it's really important to like put an
asterisk on that and say that the only way that those like
this was a purposeful decision from from Lalo and from
Elizabeth to pick this business model, because the only way we
make money by managing liquidity for nodes is if there's billions
of nodes out there. So like orange centers have directly
aligned with growing the networks and growing the network
has to happen first. And then we will backfill the growth of the
network with these problems that we expect that all the node
operators are going to have. And largely that's played out. I
think, like the one way that the one way that it may be, has kind
of shifted a little bit that hasn't aligned with our
expectations is there's been a lot like problems have been so
bad that a lot of people have gone more with the custodial
node vision. And if you're been running a custodial node, you
don't really need to use blue pool, you just like throw more
money at the problem. And that's okay.
We kind of broke that open them because we're kind of we're kind
of depended upon, upon fully noted or at least case end
enabled was almost the same thing.
Yep. And so so that's fantastic. Right, you're welcome. Which is
a thank you. That's one of the reasons why we're so excited
about this. Because like, in our in our vision, we tricked
one have a look at the fucking vj he thinks this key says.
But so you know, like it's it's it's again, it's like you said
it's the only business model, right? Like, we think that
there's eventually going to be billions of dollars a day, you
know, which you know, in our terms is billions of SATs per
day. transacted on the lightning network, and we just want to
get, you know, 50 pips or 25 pips of all that traffic. And we
think the best way to do that is to provide these really easy to
use API's from engineer liquidity. And I think there
will be more that comes down the road. So you mean like,
like pool? That's like an exam? Okay. You and I know this,
because we've talked about this. So it's not really easy yet. You
know, the thing? Yeah, I mean, it's just not easy. Yeah. And I
would love to be able to, what I would love to be able to do is
when someone fires up a node, you know, because they're a
podcast, or typically they want to receive that we're receiving
quite a bit. And then they have, you know, they have people they
want to share with the new multiple nodes. And like a
podcast, we're set up at a hosting company, and I'm just
saying podcasters as a, as a bookmark for musician. Yeah,
author, I mean, it's all come down. Is, is exactly that point
is I, it should be known, like, here's my costs. For the node,
it's, you know, which is simple to kind of figure out, but then
the, the actual, not just the liquidity, but the quality of
liquidity is going to be very, very key for so many reasons
that I'm not just discovering, as we start to see real, you
know, we have real flow, Ryan. Oh, yeah, we're gonna be 40,000
transactions this month that we're seeing is crazy.
I hear you. Yeah. And this is I mean, we are trusting we are
keenly, keenly aware of this. And it is, I think, the general,
lightning labs Mo, like, have you if you've been around using
loop, like a full year and a half ago? Like, we like to ship
very early, get these products into people's hands when they're
still ugly, and can like iterate with the market? Right, which is
why think so many people run lmd versus the protocols is because,
you know, we really respond to the market and build in
accordance with our users and with our customers.
Right. Well, thank you. Because I think that the virtual nodes
has come out of some of the demand that was created through
podcasting, it swings. That came Yes.
And so that's, it's, you know, it's it's something that it's,
it's kind of uncomfortable in the moment, knowing that you've
put something out that you know, is a little janky and doesn't
really solve all your customers problems.
What does that what does that sound like?
Yeah, that's, we share that same philosophy. We share things that
are that are ugly, as ugly as sin, and then we fix them later
and panic mode. And so and so it's panic shipping.
Episode, title damage,
panic. So, you know, like, we launched, we launched the pool
marketplace for channels in, in November, right. So it's coming
up on on four months out, we launched like the UI for it, I
think just in either December, or and I think it was in
January. So that's only been a couple months, like we're
iterating on it and got to like a lot of ideas on how to improve
it. We're getting a lot of really good feedback from people
on what works and what doesn't. And I think the goal though, of
course, like the division for this, is, you know how with
breeze, right, if you're looking to receive money, and you don't
have enough inbound liquidity, if you don't, you can't receive
enough and they will just on the fly open a channel to you. Like
the goal is that there are 1000 nodes like breeze, right, and
they're all they all have the same capabilities, they all are,
like, roughly equivalent in terms of, you know, they're the
services they can provide. We're able to kind of score them and
make sure that you know, their incentives are aligned to try
and reset the ways that the boss score is basis. So that you
know, you can you can That, you know, they have some skin in the
game regarding either this score or maybe down the road like they
actually have to like lock up some some Bitcoin and put it a
risk in case they go offline, I find
it disappointing or from our perspective that that is based
with it appears based on a big factor amount of liquidity.
Yeah. Whereas we're dealing in such micro payments that but we
are doing, we are doing a lot of activity, yet don't qualify for
the boss score for certain other types of financial incentives
that we could participate in and make use of well, so it's
racist, quite frankly,
also, one of the things I really like a mini mini ball score
well, so I think
like, again, this is one of those things that's going to be
continually evolving, for sure. And it's something we're working
on because it's such an integral point. However, one of the
things I think is really interesting is kind of the next
addition to, to pool is the concept of sidecar channels. So
right now, sidecar channel
doesn't sound sexy does. So, right, sexy sidecar talk.
So right now, pool is just, you know, buyer to seller, I want to
buy a channel I'm a podcaster. Right? I'm receiving like all
sorts of flow I'm getting tons of people are listening, and I
need to like increase my inbound liquidity. I want to buy a
channel from somebody. Right now. I have to buy direct from
the source. I and I have to like run pool myself. I have to have
a pool account. I have to find all that sort of stuff. Right?
It's it's
You got it? Man blind, right? There's
that part? UI for it now. Oh, and Graham,
where's my UI? Yeah.
So this this next concept is is Sarkar channels is allowing it
to where voltage could manage pool for you, yeah, Graham and
say, Hey, Graham, buy me a channel, right? I'll pay you
SATs over lightning. And you buy me a channel from somebody? And
so philosophical question, do you think that this should be
abstracted to a layer that no one ever really knows what
channel means? Or do you think that for the overall
understanding of freedom and forward movement of life as an
active participant in the new global financial system? It is
an I asked us for a specific reason, it is important to
understand how this works. And do you think that's important to
expose that to users? Because the biggest pushback I get is,
you know, it's my mom can't do it. Which to which I say you
know, what's wrong with your mom? learning disability?
Because it's very rude to moms, by the way,
think better of your mom. So smart
lady. But on the other hand, I also don't want to create a
world of people who think that a browser is the internet or that
Google is the internet or DuckDuckGo. Hey, I got privacy
on the internet. And this is I think it's important, but I
don't know what what the philosophy is, I don't even know
if it is the right answer to it.
I don't really know if there's a right answer either. Because I
think on the one hand, I very much sympathize with you on
wanting everybody to be an expert and understanding the
nuts and bolts and like being a truly self sovereign citizen,
right. Like, I agree with you, my core, my core, of course, I
want that to happen. But on the other side, we like we have tons
of lessons throughout the history of technology that like
that attitude, just, that's the attitude that got nobody to use
PGP. Right. But you know, what, got a bunch of people to use end
to end encryption, the signal, because signal is really easy to
use. Right. And and I think that there's a really delicate
balancing act there. And there's a problem with trying to
prematurely optimize for UX. And like sacrificing some of these
core properties. It's really more of a timing issue as the
technology develops. Okay, whoa, whoa,
100% agree with that, because we like, that's one of the things
that we that we are struggling with right now. You know, we
have podcast wallet, Comm. And we're to get bring people on
board. And there's this, there's this threshold, where you get
your, you try to get things more and more simple, more and more
simple. But then you hit a realism. Yeah, where it's like,
okay, we, we can spend a monumental amount of effort to
get an extra 5% ease of use here. But once you get that,
then what you what your end, what you end up with, is that
you've you've on boarded a user who doesn't understand what
they've just done. Yep. And then opens up a new set of support
problems, which is
unbelievably complicated. Those secondaries when they do weird
shit. Oh, my God.
I mean, it's as much like Dave, you're exactly right. It's as
much about self protection, as it is the ideology. Yeah, right.
Yeah. We have people that are putting you go into podcaster
wallet, and we ask for your podcast Feed URL and the email
address that's listed as the owner inside and out. On a
daily, you know, on a regular basis, I see people putting in
an email address, and banker. And yes, exactly anchor.fm or
podcast index.org they really had no idea what they're doing.
Yeah,
but they've, as we've, we've pulled together now almost one,
you know, 2 million podcasts in the index, what have we found
people put in the damn feeds.
Every bit, everything comes out. As you can imagine four, or
12,000
replicas of the same feed, or one feed with 12,000 episodes,
people do weird stuff, or in PDF is a 24 megabyte PDF instead of
an image
or a Photoshop file.
That's killing any Oh, it's so it's, it's just killing someone
on the bandwidth. And it's just crazy. So I know. So
there's, there's really, there's really difficult balancing act
with that. And I think it's also important, like you look at,
again, like I like, we go back to what I was saying, I don't
know, 30 minutes ago, or something like the lightning
network was born out of the constraints of the Bitcoin
protocol, right? Click on protocol is like, largely fixed.
But there are still tweaks that we can make to it. And so like,
you know, we don't have to get into details here. But like, you
know, there's a big change coming home. Right. So that
enables, like, a bunch of makes lightning way better, and makes
lightning way more private, and makes lightning way more
scalable, but allows for like, really cool, more programmable
things to be done. Is
that going to be nice? I only know, you know, I've heard a
little bit about it. The adoption, is there a time when
we're going to do phase one tests, if everyone likes it,
then adopted? I'm not quite familiar with how this
process works. There is not a process, okay, one of the
reasons why it takes so long, but it's also you know, sure.
But so like, you know, one of the one of the problems with
with wanting to like abstract, all of this difficulty away from
user and stuff is like, one, there's not really like a ton of
people clamoring for this technology right now, like,
like, like in the in the billions, right? Where we need
to make this so simple that your grandma can use it to like we
have time where we can still try and focus on making it safe and
decentralized and educating people on all this sort of
stuff, but also tos the Bitcoin protocol and like, therefore,
lightning itself is going to change. And we are going to
like, we don't want to prematurely optimize for
lightning today, because we may miss that, you know, in a couple
years, all of a sudden, lightning will get really much
easier. And maybe you can be totally safe, and not run your
own node. Right? And like no, like, if you're curious, the
thing to look into would be concept called channel
factories, which is where you know, 10 nodes are sharing a
single UT EXO, and are making channels within channels, and
stuff like that. And so like that was actually that's where
Kim Jong Hoon drop
drops the year the EMP.
So that was actually I think, I don't want to misquote this, but
I know that like Lalu helped roast beef helped with with that
paper that was like, Oh, wait, like, wait, you guys already
launched lightning network like you should have built it this
way instead. And so that's you know, when that happens, like it
could be two years from now, it could be 10 years from now, like
when that happens, I think that really helps improve the UX of
the lightning network and like a really big way. But it's just,
it's gonna take time that you know that that's the one thing I
was thinking about earlier, is when it comes to like channel
management and that kind of thing. Some people may be
listening to this, especially podcasters may be listening to
this listening to you talk about buying a channel and you're in
loop and pool and all these things and being in there. Your
first thought is filming. Oh, my gosh, I
mean, I don't make you know, that's that doesn't seem like it
would apply to podcasters. That seems like it's more of like, a
higher financial level. But really, I mean, if you think it
may be for us, for a very, very small podcast, we I mean, take
something like New York Times, like the daily or serial, I
mean, now you're telling me they made 42 million in revenue last
year. So now you're talking about, you know, that that is
where this channel management becomes of high, you know, of
extreme importance. Absolutely. Because there are big, there are
big podcasts out there that command, you know, seven figures
that we're going to need, they're gonna, they're going to
have to face these challenges. 100% so there is a podcast or
tie into it.
Yep. 100% and one verb. And I know, like, I get pushback from,
you know, people in the lightning community every once
in a while for using kind of these obscure terms. So let me
you're safe here. It's
a safe space. Let
me let me break that I really liked this metaphor for loop
though, because I think this is really easy to understand. And
something that everybody has experience with. All that loop
really is and especially in the podcast context, where you're
receiving, you're receiving money, all liberally is is
taking the cash that you have in your cash register, and putting
it in the bank. Right, but you have, you know, everybody who
ran a store for forever, had to do that at the end of the day,
right where they you know, got a certain amount of cash and a
cash register and How to take you to the bank for the bank
close. Luckily, in Bitcoin, the bank never closes. But your cash
register is just a channel, right? So you're receiving Sachi
receiving SATs, people are paying you paying you paying
you. And eventually your cash register gets full. And you need
to go positive bank. So you just loop it out, you just swap it
into on chain Bitcoin. And it's really that is it's not like, we
do have some kind of obscure language that we've tried to use
to get particularly trying to educate developers about the
mental model to use when they're building around this. But like,
really, it's it's noted, it's still money. It's no real
different from the way that we've always interacted with it.
It's all loop is, is just emptying your cash register.
That's, that's all there is to it.
I think my mom could understand that. Right?
That's not bad, isn't it? Yes.
This is your mom that has no learning disabilities. That's
true. So, um,
two things.
One, the
state of my analogy for the state of where we're at right
now, because it's the one I have and it's so close. I want to say
pirate radio in a way. But it's also an amateur ham radio
operator. And it's kind of like you're working on hf You know,
you're relying on kind of atmosphere conditions
quick. Have you seen the the guys that sent the Bitcoin
transaction? Or
do you know that I was one of them? Oh, should I was the first
Yeah. Did you know that? Now, to be fair, it was just an invoice
so it wasn't like a like a full on. It was just an invoice that
I
got offline, but I did get it was it from from NBK from the
guy? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Damn.
Yeah. That's okay. Okay, but that was here. That was here in
Austin. Was that with that little radio right over there? k
x two. So to me it's like your reach your your signals reaching
the other end and it's kind of atmosphere because there's some
skip and some things and I'm bouncing I'm going arriving. But
we're moving towards is VHF where we have repeaters all over
Austin? You know, I'm a repeater up here in my house. And, you
know, and and everyone pitches in their particular piece to
make their repeater work. And now we don't have a financial
model. But boy, wouldn't that be interesting for that? And we'll
Yeah, well, precisely. Well, this is much, much more exciting
mean, forget about ham radio is dead. I'm sorry to say it
because when snow vid hit, I'm on all the channels and
everyone's like, Can you hear me? like checking like, Where's
all the we're gonna hams are gonna save the world? Like, no,
that was dumb. very disappointing. disappointing.
Community. But, but that combination was with pirate
radio, where we're still you know, like, I'm balancing on the
roof. I'm looking at Tim over LMP can you get my signal?
Alright, you gotta you know, we got something from breeze. Yep.
And that, to me is one of the most exciting times in my life,
man, it's one fight. And I was 17 when I was on rooftops and
doing transmitters and you know, 150 watts meant a lot, which is
just the liquidity of the day. Yep, that was our liquidity to
send our center our energy out to the to the people. Now, you
know, now people have to invest in a radio. And you know, it's a
little different, not so ubiquitous yet. But it's coming.
It's coming. So what we need is we need a services company. And
if there's the ones you because I think in general is called a
lightning service provider. But even though several companies
call themselves that what we really need is a way to connect
these two worlds, where I can say to, you know, to Martin and
Mitch and David Norman, I can say, here's the API that somehow
does it all. And I know that's simplistic because of the nature
of case end and being fully noted. Because no one has made
that their business, everyone has said, here's my open source
code, go ahead and do whatever you want with it. I would love
for someone to be because you know, that's where the magic is
going to happen. So companies like us, and we're just a big,
big word. We're a partnership, really. We have we're doing one
core thing. Now we're aggregating. We're aggregating
all the data, and we just want to get whatever you think is
worth it. But we're happy with 1% for our piece in the chain.
So there's going to be has to be some companies that can do that.
who don't have the self interest of their own wallet, etc. Is
anyone doing that?
Well, so I think the closest I mean, like you're talking,
you're working with two of them already. They're just very early
on,
right? It's, yeah, but they have no time for doing any of this
because they're running their own stuff. Of course. No,
I mean, it's it's the thing is,
pay by what you write comes very close. Like Like,
like in Tim Tims fantastic, right? I've chatted with Tim
about lightning, and he's been like, on the edge pushing the
boundaries for
that these guys like Tim and Graham. They don't actually
sleep.
I'm aware of that. They've been struck by lightning
stroke
to shed
pretty well you know, The other the other one that comes close,
and it's not necessarily API ish, but satoshis de stream that
I am blown away by this, I am to that thing came out of nowhere,
and those guys are
I think it's a bunch of Dutch guys. And, and they've been
they've been like routing between themselves and was
probably marnix, who drove that. And, and once they got going,
man, it was just it was non stop, they got something grumps
ending, I'm saying, I will pay money to have this on my node.
It's unbelievable.
So that's what's that's what I think is is interesting, like a
more meta point, just about kind of decentralized communities and
open source protocols is like, I've seen this happen kind of
over and over again, where there's this, like, there's this
gap in the market, right? And the people that are trying to
build stuff, and like, I need somebody here filling this role,
and this has to happen. It's, I need this to happen, right? And
there's always this period, it's really uncomfortable, where
like, nobody steps up, nobody steps up, nobody steps up. But
eventually, like somebody, some entrepreneur somewhere, says,
You know what, like, I can solve that problem, right now I step
up, and they fill the void, and they fill the gap. And all of a
sudden, like, things just kind of accelerate there. But there's
always that uncomfortable period, where just like, nobody
stepped up yet. And everybody starts wondering, like, is this
gonna work? Do we need to like go reach out to the big
enterprises? and
paint is that for us? For sure. Exactly. And that team stepped
into exactly the
right moves. This guy's doing the same thing with was totally
stuck stream. Yeah. And I think, you know, this is this is
Thank you, by the way, for running support. For us, I see
you at 630 in the morning, are you also do you also run the
lightning pool? The Twitter account?
I do not know that. So that's, that's one of the discount.
That's HBO. And that
smelled like, you know, again, like this is this is this, this
was Thank you. It's appreciate it. And I see the CEO of breeze
doing it, you know, and it's beautiful. It's a labor of love.
Paul is always is always doing support. Yeah, it's what,
you know, one of the things that, that, on that note, kind
of a similar thing that has been really sort of striking me
lately, thinking about this yesterday, is we kind of went if
you go back to the origins of open source, I mean, maybe not
all the way back to the to the, to the cobweb days. But I mean,
like, if you go back to, you know, the 90s and Linux getting
started and all these sort of the birth of FP No, false. And,
you know, and that shareware shareware, you know, if you go
back to that whole to that, if you call that maybe a phase one,
where people were just literally giving stuff away, they get
nothing in return for it, you know, and it was, you know,
that's where you ended up with these sort of these problems of
people have these projects that became critical to the internet.
And if they fell over, you know, the whole internet stopped
working me No, no, but then you had sort of, then you then you
went to sort of a phase two, where you had companies like red
hat, who was saying, Hey, we're gonna give away all have our
stuff. But we're also going to trip but we're going to charge
you more like a freemium thing, where if you want support for
it, you're going to you pay us and that's going to be our
business model. But then now I see sort of like this phase
three emerging with lightning labs, breeze, Ellen pay. I mean,
we're Sphinx where you got these out, put us in that category as
well. We have a new category of open source company where it's
like, where the model is, yes, we're still going to give our
software away, we're going to be radically transparent. We're
going to give everything we have away. But we're just going to,
but where our value is going to be as a participant. And the end
The thing is, like, what what they're building, what lightning
Labs is building, what we're building, what braises building,
that that sort that open source stuff is building things that
will last way beyond if that company were to disappear. 100%
Yeah, I mean, like, you know, one way, I don't want to cut you
off at all, please continue. But like, all I wanted to interject
with is we're just another note on the network. Right? Well,
another couple notes on the network, right. And when we're
experiencing all the same problems that everybody else is,
a lot of the stuff that makes it into to l&d, a lot of the work
that gets prioritized is problems that, you know, we
ourselves are having in the notice, and we're like, oh, man,
other people are going to have this problem too. And then a lot
of the other problems are things that, you know, like breeze in
particular is a great example where they've been pushing the
ball forward on the zero comp channels and all that sort of
stuff that they say, hey, like, you know, I know you guys are
uncomfortable with, you know, this sort of stuff making l&d
but we need this, we're gonna make the PR we're gonna make it
easy to review. We're gonna set it out there and we're gonna
push for this to make it in because we think it'll improve
the network for everybody else.
Do you think that everyone will be a company like, Well, let me
just cut just to give you a guess like Apple who could
integrate this into their products or is that Yeah, easily
counterintuitive to their current business and
Actually, I think Apple is probably the most likely now,
you know, probably years away,
but like, Apple made a very interesting why years away, just
because of the nature of the beast, it takes six days to move
something out of Suez Canal idea.
So kind of kind of like in 2017 so I really like how this a lot
of this comes from Elizabeth Of course, working behind the
scenes, but how Ross Stephens the executive chairman of 98 I
don't know if y'all read his shareholder letter talking about
Bitcoin but he or no, this is actually his interview with
Michael sailor, the MicroStrategy CEO he talked
about how there's Bitcoin the asset and people really get
Bitcoin the asset the store value what people are sleeping
on and what they don't really understand yet is Bitcoin the
network and that's of course is a cube locations
network is
exactly right. Like Not a lot of people get that yet. In 2017.
There were you know, all of these all of this overexuberance
all this talk about how like all the institutions are coming like
you know, they're gonna be buying you know, billions of
dollars a Bitcoin, putting on the balance sheet. We're like,
next step as nation states, we're almost there. And all of
that, guys,
this is the year of desktop, Linux, 100%. Right.
They went wrong. Now the mobile Linux, that's what this is 1000s
of sealed, indictments will be unveiled my friend, all these
crooked all these crooked people are going to jail.
But like they weren't wrong, they were just like four years
too early. Right. And so I think that was because, you know,
these these large companies, these large institutions, when
they make a big decision on something core is like joining
us. Right? The big deal. It's a big deal. They don't like the
good Apple put a note in every phone today. Yeah, probably,
like, are they going to wait until you know somebody else has
tried and failed and look stupid doing it so they can learn from
it? Most likely, right. And I think we'll probably get there,
you know, we'll backdoor way into it. You know, the future, I
think, is everybody like, you know, your little raspy Blitz
right there, which is a great product and Rizal and open arms.
And those guys have done a great job with it. I think the future
is something that's you know, like a slick, super sexy apple
or square device. plugged in, it's your bank, you plug it in,
and you pair on your phone. And you know, nobody's able to lose
your money, you have customer support, you know, you got like
private key management, super easy. And it just holds your
Bitcoin in your like, slowly earn interest. And you know,
ideally, if you're a podcaster, or a creator, and this is why I
think Apple is actually a great fit for it is because they're
all about, you know, creative people. If you're a creator,
this is your, you know, your bank, your cash register. And
that's why they did what they did with Final Cut Pro creators,
you know, like,
there's this kind of to face side to it. Right? Yeah, it
was the strongest proponent of Apple
for a while, don't
you think? Don't you think Tesla change that change that
narrative when they when they pulled their Bitcoin purchase? I
mean, I don't because it seems it seems like that was I think
it was a little bit of a two edged sword because some people
can dismiss Tesla because they Ilan is crazy. But then, at the
same time, though, that's a humongous bet.
That's a really good Yeah, it's
a really good point. You know, and Apple is, you know, if Apple
is multiple Tesla's, I guess, it comes to this point where we are
financially or economically on a macro level, if you look at it
mean, just take us for example. I mean, there's really no place
to put your money to make anything. Yep. And in that goes
in that is trickle It began with low interest rates at banks, and
that has trickled up now. to large, it's, the problem is
growing to larger institutions. So if, in the way the US treats
Bitcoin, is, you know, treating it as property is almost, it's
like, it's, it's probably the best thing that could have ever
happened to Bitcoin, obviously.
Yeah. Thank you for saying that, if you could, it like, like, I
don't know these people personally, but I know people
that know, like, you know, a bunch of the big Chinese miners
who've been mining since 2010. Like the flood of Bitcoin that
has come out of Chinese pockets and into the hands of us
institutions over the last like three years in particular is
just
staggering. You were telling me this morning about what avid was
saying this is old news by now people are hearing this but so
so the the idea is that we're going to make Texas A crypto
state mining friendly.
I mean, there's like a my I mean, Bitcoin is as Texan as it
gets.
I agree. And have you ever been on to those guys out there? at
the at the switch there beyond Taylor, the rockdale sign?
Yeah, those guys haven't been out there like,
Oh my god, it's like crypto crypto cowboys in the desert. It
is.
Yeah. They've,
you know, they have a barn literally, a barn.
That's incredible. And I mean, you're gonna see like, there's
like those guys. There's flared gas guys. flare
gas is very interesting where they build containers out.
They're so there's the huddle ranch guys. But
then there's also you know, like, you know, the unchained
capital guys here in Austin like they're one of the kind of
foremost kind of Bitcoin banks right now.
It makes sense for this to happen in the south to the east.
Totally Kentucky just passed laws to make to incentivize my
Bitcoin miners to come to the state. Yeah,
yeah, it's so so so Abbott's tweet this morning, you know, he
was he was pulling to Trump and tweeting from the shitter
12:37am.
Nothing wrong with that, my friend,
count me in as a crypto law proposal supporter is
increasingly being used for transactions and is beginning to
go mainstream as an investment, fidelity etc. Trying to get a
Bitcoin ETF Texas should lead on this like we did with a gold
depository.
That's so powerful. Send
it that that's so
powerful.
Let's go. And so one one light, like interesting little
connection here is Wyoming is kind of leading the way right
now. You know, thanks to Caitlin long and a number of folks up
there and now senator Loomis up they're leading the way on like
actual legislation that's been passed. It's Bitcoin friendly,
this regulating asset the right way, is making it safe to build
a business there and to and to hold crypto assets within the
state absolute that's important. And so what's great, the really
cool thing that we have going here in Texas is one of like the
key members on the blockchain Task Force up there they got
this pushed is will Cole who is the head of product at unchained
capital now,
I met with that I meet him when I moved to that meetup. I can't
remember. I met I met him guys named Parker.
Where you're in Texas.
He's he's he's almost always there. But I actually don't
know. He may not have been there. I think you I don't think
he was because, yeah, he's, I mean, you know, get him we got
Christopher callicott at Trimble Venture Partners who's who's
helping kind of with the blockchain task force here in
Texas, Joe Kelly's the CEO, how can I help? I think
I can do here and if you need any, like free marketing,
I mean, as I as I as I generally do all connect.
What am I even saying? Crazy things.
I don't get the handoff. Yeah, exactly. Cuz, I mean, like,
that's one of the things that you know, a lot of the crypto
anarchists people in Bitcoin, right, like they say, like, you
know, we need to build a system so that we don't need
regulators, right. So that we can exist outside of this. Yeah,
that's that's not
the right way to do it.
I largely agree philosophically. And but like, you just got to
transition. I know, you got to transition and like it would be
so much easier if we could do this in a way where like, the
rules were set in place to where like it was it was okay to do
this. And people felt comfortable already great.
And what away what a way for our mayor in Austin to to rebuild a
bridge and to reach out and to say, you know, we may disagree
on some things. But I like the idea of Austin being the crypto
capital of the United States
put a billboard up in Cabo. Let him know.
Yeah. So like with any his head can put it up.
You see, this is the beauty of a take and put it up so Adler can
see
it. There you go.
It feels like to me I love the fact that states are doing this
and leading states rights is gonna be huge. It feels like the
return of Wildcat banking. Yeah, that's
a great point.
It's all because it's it's all because it's property and not
currency. If this was currency, you would have immediate Well,
you know, it evens even so I mean, like, to me, what I think
one people one thing people don't understand, at least here
in the us is that states rights is probably the strongest right
now that it has been since before World War One. I mean, it
is so it has been a very slow sort of silent progression that
began with the the began with California and the West Coast
challenging the feds on on marijuana legalization, and then
thing just died. And they're like the feds initially were
rating California. And they basically said, Hey, you, you're
gonna stop that right now? Because
we might have our National Guard like, shoot back.
Exactly. They did. And it has been like a resurgence of states
right now states states are essentially nullifying in not
maybe not in principle, but inaction. They're nullifying
federal laws just whenever they want to know if the if you have
a return, like a resurgence of sort of a Wildcat banking,
alternative currency movement that happens among the states,
that could get very interesting very quickly.
What can we learn from that history and mistakes that should
not be remade? Or is is it is our Genie So? So like when our
genies got out of the bottle, that bottle cease to exist?
So I think the really the really interesting thing, there is an
argument posed by Ben hunt, who writes, he's got like a
financial blog, and I'm blanking on of course, right.
Mike's brother.
No joke, I'm
sorry. Really bad joke.
Epsilon theory is his blog. So he reads these hedge fund guys,
this guy generally very smart and a lot of bitcoiners have
been reading him for a long time. And he like his they've
been flabbergasted that he like, doesn't like Bitcoin. So he
recently was like on a, you know, it was on a podcast or
clubhouse or something like that and kind of clarified his
position a little bit, which I actually thought was very smart.
I mean, it's like the, the, the way that this goes down, it
fails as us has always been to like budding about Wall Street
kind of taking control and stuff. It's like the way this
goes down and go sideways. If we get Facebook, just like kind of
how Facebook did to the internet, where they just made
the experience. so nice and so slick, that before you knew it,
billions of people thought that they were using the free and
open Internet. That's what I'm
worried about was with Apple that they come in and do some
kind of payment thing and Apple Pay. And then they make it so
slick and so easy. Everyone goes drooling over there until we go
through another eight years and people get kicked off and
defunded and D platformed. And they have to learn again, that's
a fear.
So that's the argument that's the argument or prioritizing
education right now, rather than prioritizing. You know, UX, is
saying like, you know, we need as many people out there in the
world that understand this stuff that are capable of running
their own nodes are capable of running nodes for their
neighbors and for the friends and stuff like that. They can
make the experience easy enough for their their community. So
that when Apple comes in or you know, whoever comes in with
their like, nice, sleek, shiny, you know, almost Bitcoin but not
really Bitcoin. They can say No, thanks, we're good with our own
thing.
This this one, maybe weird piece of advice, that wisdom I'll give
to anyone who wants to start some development. From our own
experience, we started nine months ago, I put, you know,
some savings onto my onto my home node here. Put a couple
grand in cookbooks onto the podcast index node. And Dave
pulled his card for the servers. And then we brought in Eric,
who, you know, made us all legal and appropriate and protected
and bank accounts and all that stuff. But the even though we've
been I've been spending money on voltage, I've been opening
channels for people, we've set up notes for people in pre
finance that just you know, because we thought thought was
important. We still have more money than when we started with
because of the intrinsic without the value in Trinidad, right?
Where because the value of Bitcoin versus the US dollar has
just exponentially gone up that we're running in the plus while
making expenses of a startup, which is is very novel
experiences superpower. Yeah, and I don't think it'll stop.
You know, I mean, I'm I'm like, I'm with Max Keiser, no matter
what, whatever max says he called 50. Right, called 62.
Right? I'm with Max. No, it doesn't really matter. The fact
that the money would not be stored in any better place. Yep.
Is, is a huge advantage.
That's a good point. Because we there's been an ongoing
discussion over the last couple of days on the on the mastodon
about, like, with me, and I know, Adam is the same way and a
lot of other big one centric people are this way, is, you
know, I just leave when, when money comes into my node, like,
my, my split my value split of this show, you know, sat
streaming, and I just leave, I mean, it just stays there. I
don't, I don't ever think about taking it out, because I'm just
gonna just gonna do that. But then there's been questions
lately, it's like well, okay, now I've got SATs, like, what do
I do with this study? Or how do I get it out? You know, like,
how do I getting it out? meaning how do I convert this back into
Fiat if I'm gonna and like, what is what's the current thinking
on that? What's the best way to sort of convert stuff back out
of lightning without getting sort of destroyed on the way
out?
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, like that's
isn't that what what jack Mahler's is doing in a way or is
that not quite so
I've never I've only ever used jack to go into lightning I've
never seen I've never done the opposite way. I imagine it works
fine there but I just haven't done it right. But like you
know, the folks that river financial who we talked to today
you know, they they're like a Bitcoin first kind of bank and
so they have lightning deposits enabled so you can go deposit
straight to rivers node and they'll you know, you can swap
so your Bitcoin your lightning Bitcoin for $4 directly there
have them do the swap you have them do this or
however they manage it. No one needs to know
right? It's now because like you're sending it into their
custody, right? You know, it's theirs, but they will kind of
credit you with it. In general, kind of like the Fiat to
lightning bridges are even slow to pop up. I think. Yeah, kind
of like the more the more customer demand that there is
for it.
But in our case, it's it's lightning to Fiat because
everyone's you know, just wound up with with lightning because
they set up a node and they're receiving and now it's getting
out. Yep. And I think this is the the An issue between on
chain and off chain and yeah and I
and that's it's it's tough. I mean, like ideally companies
would just handle that for you. But there is just like a lot of
the Fiat on ramps are also crypto exchanges.
Yeah and they have all kinds of regulatory issues
and regulatory they have internal incentive issues were
actually much they much would refer you to swap your Bitcoin
for sure another coins that they can do they can profit off the
trade and then have you send out there right then just have
handled the Bitcoin swap for you. So like, you know, there's,
there's a GitHub repo of all the exchanges that support lightning
right now. And, you know, like, it's, there's a bunch in, like
Argentina, there's a bunch in, there's a couple in Vietnam,
there's some like in you know, like Sub Saharan Africa,
there's, you know, a handful in Eastern Europe, like they're all
over the place, it's just the US has been a little bit slower to
adopt. So I think like, your two best bets are either strike from
jack Mahler's or river financial, right? For going
directly from lightning to US dollars. And both of like, I use
both of those products. They're both, you know, run by good
solid bitcoiners I, you know,
you can you can depend on them. It's really, it's really
interesting, that cash app and Coinbase and some of these
other, you know, mainstream bi, Fiat to Bitcoin conversion
places have not could in a lightning interface. I mean, it
just doesn't see, there's, it seems fairly low risk to me, I'm
not sure why that has that it's not a regulatory issue that they
can't do that.
I mean, like, it's kind of it really depends, like the
regulatory issue that you're talking about Israel, where it's
much worse than the EU, we've had actually a lot harder
problems with where the the regulators want to know, like,
every amount that you get,
I'm FIFA gods, we can't have Bitcoin as an off ramp out of
prison, you need to know where it came from. And you also need
to know where it's going. And so on lightning, like if somebody
is paying an invoice, like when I got paid by Eric wall,
actually, last night. Like I got the invoice paid, but I posted
the invoice on Twitter. And so I didn't like really no, of Erica
paid it. So anyone could have paid but he paid Yeah. And so I
didn't want to tell him like, hey, the invoice got paid in
case like in case he wants to?
Well, but if it's paid, then it's invalid. Use it again.
Right? But so, so so so he may be thinking, you're full of
crap, because you said you got it. And he knows that he that
the invoice failed. So you're just gonna be at each other's
throats for decades over the years. You just
paid from one year nose to the other nice, right? That's
right.
I don't know. It's like, I got it. Yeah, so so. So yes, there
is a regulatory burden. But like, there are tons of
companies who've gotten over it, right? Because like, you know,
you can you if you're accepting if you're doing withdrawal, and
you're sending the Bitcoin out, right? Like you have custody of
it, you can cancel a payment you can have like a blacklist of
nodes or something like that and say this is not okay. If you're
receiving Bitcoin that is like a little bit trickier. But
generally, like, there's already no
jack masters get over it. And he's like, 20 years old. I
know. I know. Right? Like, like, this
thing is there. What did he get visa into help financially and
also with some regulatory stuff isn't all I
think it's like, like the, the what he's actually doing is he's
like live trading the difference like he, it's, you give him
dollars, but you don't actually own Bitcoin? Right? He's live
trading the difference in a sending Bitcoin for you.
I guess the one that bothers me the most is cash app. I mean,
like jack Dorsey, you would think that he would have that
thing figured out by now. Yeah, I don't. That's the one that
boggles my mind is what is that thing, that cash app is like a
10 headed Hydra of the of ways to move money around? Well,
because last night, I
would Yes. And Ryan would know better and doesn't have to say
anything. It was uncomfortable. I would guess they know that
they that. Okay. This is the AOL problem. America Online, had
everything tight was beautiful. It was safe. You've Got Mail,
everything was fantastic. And then they said, People said,
Well, we want the internet. We hear something's going on out
there. And now it's too dangerous, be too dangerous.
You've Got Mail. And then they finally opened up a little
portal and said, Okay, you go through here. This is very
dangerous. It could be weird shit out there at your own risk.
Six months later, they were a dial up company. And I think
that's what jack sees.
I don't disagree with you. I will also say I think he's
keenly aware that that's a possibility. But I think you'll
notice, like the latest move that they made, right was
Elizabeth has said this for a while, is they chose to scale
via layer SQL, where they made internal cash app transactions
free, right, which means they just said like in their internal
SQL database, like one big one.
Like that.
This is changing the ledger basic
which is like you Significantly, like safer
antithetical to Bitcoin but antithetical,
right? And so like they could have made each of those a
lightning transaction. Yeah. But like, you know, there's I think
that there there are still legitimate, you know, they have
millions of users and millions of very non technical users,
they do not they do not want like they've made it a very
clear point of making all the Bitcoin stuff incredibly simple
on cash app, I think it's, it's fair to say the lightning is
still a little too complicated for them. If they wanted to
prioritize it, and like really make it work and had like high
demand from the customer base to integrate it, I think it could
do it. However, still, it's just a fact that the dominant use for
Bitcoin is buying and holding it, especially in the US, which
I think is to Dave's point about it being property, right. Like I
just,
I just I agree, like, I look at, I look at my cash app, and I
look at my strike app. And I'm at Dave something and
overwhelmed both. It just seems like everything is poised to be
able to just make that thing just 100% right. by me. It looks
like it looks like mastodon is what it looks like, looks like
the fediverse. Right,
I just need to learn how to federate into all of that.
That's an interesting analogy. That's
one of the things that, you know, I've been excited about
for a while is like, it's ridiculous that I can't send
from Venmo cash app. Right. That's like, that's what
lightning enables.
Interestingly enough, I think both of them use plaid as a back
end and you could actually do it.
But that's, that's one of the things we're like, yeah, like
they there is you're absolutely right, that there is like with
traditional FinTech and enlightening and Bitcoin in
general, there is just this. There's this incumbency problem,
where, you know, we're seeing a lot more people pushing the ball
forward and really innovating on lightning actually
internationally. The guys at moon wallet in Argentina, like
they're fantastic, their wallet is great. They have like a ton
of users using it all the time. The Phoenix
wallet is also very slick and what I like about them is
they've just figured out how they're going to make money
we're charging you this money here this money or this money or
enjoy is pretty good experience Yep.
I mean like like and you know jack
couldn't convince him to do podcasting but you know, that's
because the French hate me
Don't come around that okay. Hope so. I think there's Yeah,
like like it's it's I
can't let the Israeli show him up. Right. I
mean, seriously, do another war in the desert people come on
what's going on with you Frenchies? Yeah,
there's I think it's I don't know I'm very optimistic it's
it's a matter of time like the path dependence that it takes to
actually get there you know, there will be it's one of those
things where like, there will be kind of pain points here like I
was saying earlier, there's like obvious to everyone where we
need more Fiat off ramps, all that is is just an opportunity
for an entrepreneur to to step in and get a bunch of business
without a doubt.
This is such an exciting place for entrepreneurs because you
can do it at home with your existing PC you know, set up a
node that wait five days to free to have the blockchain
synchronize that five days Well, maybe
you found a Raspberry Pi
fast SSD well it came shipped with it. That's what that's what
I liked about that.
Question.
What do we do when Bitcoin sucks the entire global financial
system into the black hole that Bitcoin is? And then the US
military shows up at lightning labs with their guns? At what
point? I mean, do we do we circumvent that or no?
I've got the answer. No,
thank you. I've
got the answer to that. You're talking to the guy you're
talking to the guy who works for a company called lightning labs
and the CEO his name Elizabeth Stark.
Oh my god the superheroes That's right. Why are we even worried
at all
I don't think they have to worry about the military I got
everything covered day
I was wondering why we're arriving at parties suit that he
flew in and I'm gonna have to come to Alabama right now in
silence and you know too much
flash memory stick you know too much that's answered what else
man? What What, what for the it's I mean, what are you doing
is is Bitcoin Miami the big thing or what's going on? Where
are we focusing our energy is just builds build the way we
have which is fine by me, by the way.
So I think like my a lot of a lot of the cognitive dissonance
I think that a lot of people have with with Bitcoin and
lightning like I hear you hear this all the time is like
nobody's going to spend their Bitcoin right. And I think what
I particularly like about what you guys are doing more than
anything else, is that you're focusing on the other side of
the equation focusing on the people who want to earn Bitcoin,
right and, and the people who really want to send it to those
people exactly.
But that's the thing is that it's another
two sided equation isn't
it is a two sided equation, but like the gravity of the people
who are saying pay me in Bitcoin, like if they're
creating valuable content, Their users will figure out a way.
I just want to just want to say something I'm going to disagree
with you. Okay? the gravity of what we're doing is being pushed
by listeners. Really? Fuck yeah. That's how that's how podcast
marketing works. Of course, we have, you know, 10 guys or gals
who go, Oh, I totally want this. But what happens is, and because
I've been doing this from the beginning, and people will come
to me and say, well, they're listening. I've been listening
to this show. They always say, you should listen to this guy.
He has something interesting. There's this cool technology
podcasters are using they are the true push, or the gravity,
as you say, of podcasting, because this is not a listener
relationship. It is a it's tribes is so appropriate,
because that's what we have. We've gone into media tribes,
you see it on mainstream, you have the msnbc tribe, and you
have little tribes amongst that. And here we have. And I really
noticed this with Joe Rogan back, you know, a year ago,
March, we had the Joe Rogan tribe who were exposed to me
there, and then they came over to the no agenda, tribe. They're
members of both. Yeah. And then they spread all these things.
And then Tom Woods came into this tribe. So that's all all
with you would say user. I just prefer to say producer because
that's what they turn out to me in this relationship. So that's
what I'm seeing, but not discounting what you're saying
about that pool being there. But it's, it was Stefan Molyneux,
who was, you know, a controversial guy. his listeners
kept telling him is you've got to get on this thing. You've got
to get on this thing. He sends me an email says, hey, it's Adam
and Stefan. We never spoken before. But what's this
lightning this lightning thing? And so before you know it,
listener of he's in New Hampshire has helped set him up.
Wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
So that right, you're just like, Whoa, is that in that regard?
It's like Venmo cuz I had never everybody like you. It's the
people who want to pay you that force you to adopt a certain
technology, because real quick, real quick, everybody said, you
know, do you want eight? Do you take Venmo? Do you take Venmo?
Do you take Venmo? It's like No,
that's okay. Tron rolled out. People got like, you got to get
Patreon. You got to get a Patreon, go to patreon or
Patreon, go to patreon.
Well, let's just get in. That's, that's super interesting,
because like, one thing I always have in the back of my mind is
when is the time to go and do another? Bitcoin, like, merchant
adoption, push, like, like brick and mortar? Like there's this,
you know, in 2013, there was a huge push amongst the Bitcoin
community for circular economy, merchant adoption, like we need
to get, you know, Academy and Dick's Sporting Goods accepting
Bitcoin and like, that's when like, it'll be the time, right?
But like, of course, on chain, Bitcoin isn't a payment
protocol. Like, it wasn't really designed for that it wasn't
really built for it. So it's like, one thing I kind of always
have in the back of my mind is like, is now the time to go and
get a bunch of people and get the community to go out like,
your bars, or restaurants, or sporting goods stores, you know,
wherever you spend money, and to say, why aren't you accepting
lightning? I want to pay you in Bitcoin on opinion. Bitcoin. I
want a penguin like this. Yeah,
I think Ryan, I think that's, I think that's happening right
now. But I mean, I think what you see with podcasting is is
that happening? Yeah, because what you're going to end up with
is, at some point, like, you know, I'll use the mouse app,
wallet, and I can just check what's coming into my node. I
mean, at some point, I got a bunch of lightning sitting
there. And when, whenever I want to refill my wallet on things or
breeze, you know, I'll just shoot some issues and lightning
stuff over there. And at some point, I'm going to have, you
know, some decent chunk of money sitting there. And I'm going to
want to start paying my brother in law, who does my taxes, I'm
going to start paying him and I will say, hey, do you have
strike? And then it's like, it's going to, I don't think it'll
ever add, there's no push into merchant services, necessarily
this point to make that traction happen, is going to be person to
person Money, money transfers, just like Venmo where you're,
where your sister in law says, Hey, do you have Venmo? And
maybe she says, Hey, do you have strike? Or hey, do you have, you
know, can you take a lightning payment? And here's an invoice.
I mean, like, I don't, I think that the podcasting stuff is the
beginning of something that creates that and self
perpetuates.
I agree with you on that.
Yep. proposal. Shoot for Austin. Soon to be the crypto capital of
the universe Bitcoin
capital universe. This is the Bitcoin industry, not the crypto
industry.
Yes.
I'm with you. I'm a little I'm a little I'm a little taken aback
because I'm big into alliteration, so I have to
figure out
the B
when bubble,
no bad connotation not quite that
Bonanza. How about this, I will gladly get a few friends and I
will personally put a 5% of my my lightning earnings into an
Austin node for the homeless, which are people also known as
experiencing homelessness, which is being completely mismanaged
by by city council and by Austin and by a bunch of dickheads. And
so one thing I have dealt a lot with the homeless in Austin, and
you know that we have community first village, and we have a lot
of different great programs that I think do work, when doesn't
work is when you and I drove by on East Riverside just minutes
ago, they all had, they all have smartphones. I'd like to
reintroduce faucets. I'd like to have people be on a subscription
so you can get a portion could we just going to throw money at
these people? But instead of saying here's your free hotel
room, you know, here's Yeah, and we can also route your
disability, we'll help you with that. Get that into your
lightning wallet, you check into your into your homeless hotel,
which is what we're doing in Austin. But you scan the QR code
and you're back in society with it can be small, you know, this
is why it's so cool. Couldn't be variable, small amounts. No
one's really in the middle. No, no dickhead. Like VSA is making
money off of the whole thing, like they do with snap. And then
I think you'll see vendors who will feel more comfortable with
people because here's some proof that I have. And there's no
there's contracts we can make. And there's payments that we can
agree upon. And so maybe this person doesn't have the exact
profile that I would want as a renter or a patron or someone
buying something else but then you can really start an economy
where we're not just pissing money away you can and by the
way, this is a problem that would work for many places in
the United States and around
the world places that are increasing.
Yeah, is that something that I mean it's a political thing
possibly it's a lot of work but um I mean,
I don't know it's very interesting because I'm yet to
see
a good idea guy man i don't i don't implement this shit I got
no Dave Dave When can we build this
as I get things get back to work.
But is that is that missing something like that? I would
think
so. Because I think like you know, that's that's one thing
that
I by the way any podcaster or content creator but in our world
podcaster can say you know what, that's really cool. I want to
add a 5% value block to the to the Los Angeles node ID or the
video
it's really interesting idea because because one thing one
thing Louisville you know, whatever, Paul Paul from Spanx
don't the whole stack works thing is fantastic. He chastised
me a couple times about focusing on kind of like the exchanges
and the big kind of like supply side you know the big market
remittances all that sort of stuff and he's like no like
people that are gonna adopt this technology first are going to
people that absolutely need it poor people, but you know
podcasters poor people
are poor. They can't receive money
from their audience right now. Right and and his stack workers
they'd like to get paid for their work right now. And you're
desperate for other things. And here's another group of people
that desperate for some connection, just word financial.
We're trying to do that. We've we've already talked about this
new we want to Dave we're talking about incentivizing
stack workers to find duplicate feeds in the in the end Yes.
That's a real problem. They can be solved it Do you know that
I'm willing to put money to yeah,
oh, yeah. We'll put money into that for sure. Yeah, for sure.
That there's this whole push now in you know, Congress with AOC
and all this stuff about putting, getting letting people
have checking accounts at the post office and all that digital
dollar that's that's
the devil down baby. That's
what I'm saying. Like, there's this whole thing for the
unbanked there's like this big term just going around now. No,
I mean, this Lenny, you We all know that Bitcoin allows you to
be your own bank, the meetup just make people their own bank.
Yeah, absolutely. No. 100% Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I
think it's now might be the time
well, you know, if lightning labs has any lobbyists or
something or whatever you guys do over there to make because
you got to do more than just make great code. You got some
you got something on what's going on there for you. But we
have one we have Mackenzie Kelly here in Austin, who's now City
Council. I don't know much about her except she listens to my
show. So pre approved. Yeah. Yeah, good enough, good enough
that you want to fix the homeless that were the quote
unquote, camping ban. You know, he wants to find a better
solution because that's clearly not working for anybody. Little
guys in that episode, and manage it to me Listen, I mean, even
just we park money with unchained and then you can use
that to leverage and give people some liquidity. It's all about
the liquidity. And thank you for bringing up the unbanked because
yes, the government scariest words. From the government here
to help are coming, you know, yeah, they're coming in is going
is going to be that level of control where the freedom is
here. And there's and there's a ton of merchants and vendors in
Austin who are very
freedom oriented that way. And they and they really they keenly
understand the problem they owe these people, these people in
our companies are not monsters, right? The people who are
temporarily experiencing homelessness, I
know some some not even temporarily, and some for some,
it's a lifestyle, also cool. But we got to figure out a better
way. So it works with everybody. And if that means that we need
to get what I learned from from community first village, which
is just phenomenal. This is what types of people are noticed the
Tiny Homes, and the people there do pay rent, but they help you
it's 75 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. It's 250 for a cabin,
you get shared kitchen. You know what, there's not a there's no
fighting, there's no there's problems, but they solve it as a
community, not by calling in the cops. Yeah. Which is, by the
way, one of the things I love most about Bitcoin, is it It
removes something we've become very comfortable with in our
lives in the United States is we always have a middleman. Yeah,
we don't go over to the neighbor anymore and say, Hey, man, turn
it down. No, we call the cops we call, you know, whoever it is. I
don't like what you said to my kid at school. I'm suing the
school get it, you know, that's, that is so unAmerican, it's
Americanism, actually, that, you know, by removing the middleman
and all these different things, and, and making it a community
effort, which is what people who are homeless have lost their
community. That's the number one reason people become homeless
because they have dramatic family loss. And then you know
what, it doesn't take long, you know, for four weeks to months,
you're out on the street, you know, you're living in your car.
Yeah. And then it's downhill from there. So it's just a
matter of getting a community back, we have so many members
say 15 different producers of the show who are experiencing
homelessness at various times. But they have all caught on to
the satoshis. Because they're very literate, they understand
phones and all that stuff. And they're like, Hey, wait a
minute. There's something here.
Yeah. So one unique life experience I have is, you know,
bought this house just not too far away from you. And directly
across the street. I can it's like the view out of my kitchen
window right over my sink when I'm doing dishes. is not like
the homeless person tent. But it is like a halfway house for
veterans in particular.
I know exactly what you're right next to the fire station. Of
course, of course.
So I talked to these guys, you know, like every weekend, right?
These are normal, smart, intelligent, educated people.
Right? That just somehow gotten screwed. Right? One way or
another, there's a million different stories. Somehow
they've gotten screwed, and they're just like, I don't know,
like, you know, they, they're, they're all trying to pick
themselves back up. You know, they all have kind of reference.
I'm like intimately familiar with these people. And they just
like, all I need is just kind of just a little help. Right?
But help with responsibility, if you can give them true freedom.
Austin, Austin city and the state of Texas is not designed
by any any means to give people freedom, more freedom than most,
but the financial freedom. And I know sounds really abstract and
I'm getting real preachy, but I really believe that that makes a
difference. Just like they need community they need freedom to
understand that I'm not tethered to that. And that I can do
things myself and I don't have to go to the post office and
stand in line because
that drives those dogs a million times even even the regs like
you know, I'm sure people that run the actual house itself or
two people but even the regs there. These guys are like I'm
not a four year old, right right. Like I can handle myself
they wouldn't even let them have a barbecue the other day or
whatever holiday stay at my place
take some stats you know stake some SATs for in case you go
nuts and I'll give that back to you you know we can do that with
a contract whatever it sounds like like a swing strive don't
spam my house bro.
There you go. Bitcoin fixes homelessness.
They've got a beautiful, no, that would be beautiful. And you
give you know, you free merchant services you get you know,
partner with somebody like river, I guess is a river that
you're talking about.
Either at the river or on chain run chain has been looking for a
reason to get into the lightning space for a while.
Yeah. In my brain, you know, you bring in say, Well, you know, if
you're going to be a merchant that participates in this in
this system, we'll you know, we'll set you up to set up a
node and we'll do your financial services for you. And
I'm sorry, you you can't see his face day because we triggered
something in Ryan. He's awesome. a whole different dimension. I
can see it he's like or maybe it's just like, I want another
beer. I don't know which one is it?
column, a little column. We
got to wrap this up. So this has been very different episode from
what we've ever done, but I really appreciate it. Could you
give us some insight into, you know, a lot of stuff that we
don't understand. And just the general vision and you
represent, you know, the AI in this case, you represent an
entire movement, which is really nice. And it's and it's great to
have you almost next door, man, we
should hang out more often. We
really should I it's an absolute pleasure to be on here, guys.
Really appreciate it. Dave, you know, we missed you in the
studio today for sure.
Oh, yeah. Y'all are drinking beer and all this kind of stuff.
I'm just sitting here in my half assed studio with my laptop on
my cardboard box. But
hold on a second. You do have that brand new spankin Db x
compressor limiter noise gate?
Oh, yeah, I got blinky lights. I got lights.
Like a pro? We will
thank some of our value for value. Do you have anything for
today? Or is that coming out of sequence? You want to do that?
On the next show?
I think I've got I had a couple but I think I'm just gonna save
them. Okay, excellent.
Yeah. But, of course, you can support us by going to podcast
index.org scroll to the bottom, and we get the big red Donate
button cuz, you know, yellows for pussies. It's red, red, red
makes it happen.
Yeah, yellows, and DS or
DS are solely for pussies. So we'll be back next week with
another board meeting podcasting. 2.0. Dave, thank you
very much, man.
It's great. Great talk to you, Ron.
great talking to you as well. Okay, before all the great work
you're doing. Likewise.
We'll be back next week with another edition of podcasting.
2.0 bringing into the board meeting for podcasting. news.org
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